Musescore on Linux

[BGuttman]

I'm getting very confused.

I have Musescore 4 on my Windows 10 machine.

I have Musescore 3 on my older Linux Mint (built as 20, currently 21.3) machine.

I'm building a new Linux Mint (22) machine and all I can get is Musescore 2.

I found some stuff online that says the Linux repository only contains Musescore 2. There is some kind of image of Musescore 4 on the Musescore Web Site which I downloaded but can't open.

How the heck did I get Musescore 3 on my older box, and can I get Musescore 4 on my new one?

[ghmerrill]

Are you saying you can't download and install an executable? Or that you can't build it from source?

[JohnL]

Have you gone through this procedure?
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/4/dow ... n#AppImage

[muschem]

I believe flatpack support is baked into Mint since ~ version 18 or so, which means this should work for you: https://flathub.org/apps/org.musescore.MuseScore.

[Matt K]

If you installed via the App Store in mint I believe the issue is that MiseScore stopped updating that distribution when they switched to flat pack and later AppImage. So you’ll end up with really ancient versions at this point if you apt install it. The blessed way to install is directly via the site using MuseHub now, which is available as an appimage, my least favorite way to package software:

https://musescore.org/en/handbook/4/dow ... stallation

[jonathanharker]

I've been meaning to dig into why the Debian maintainer(s) don't (or can't, or won't) upgrade it to 4. I smell shenanigans - this sort of thing sometimes happens when an "open source" project is dominated by a commercial entity; the availability and access to the source is gradually walled off. Like I said though I don't know if that's the case, and one day I'll find the time to find out. In the meantime, you can install the FlatPak:

Code: Select all

flatpak install flathub org.musescore.MuseScore

You might need to

Code: Select all

sudo apt install flatpak

first.

[boneagain]

I've been meaning to dig into why the Debian maintainer(s) don't (or can't, or won't) upgrade it to 4. I smell shenanigans - this sort of thing sometimes happens when an "open source" project is dominated by a commercial entity; the availability and access to the source is gradually walled off. Like I said though I don't know if that's the case, and one day I'll find the time to find out. In the meantime, you can install the FlatPak:

Code: Select all

flatpak install flathub org.musescore.MuseScore

You might need to

Code: Select all

sudo apt install flatpak

first.

This sort of thing also happens when a distribution is too slow adding updates for the pace of the app developer.

I don't like the added megabyte footprint of appimages,
but I DO like being able to use an appimage to get a current version of an app without having to do a big Mint upgrade, THEN find that even there the app version is several levels back.

[Matt K]

Yeah Debian stable is not the place to look for up-to-date packages. I would suspect that it would be added to unstable sometime in the next year or so and ultimately be put in in like 2026, if a maintainer wants to package it up. FWIW, someone does have MuseScore 4 in the AUR if you want to try your hand at Arch and really don't want to use flatpak or appimage.

[jonathanharker]

Yeah it's not like its lib dependencies are particularly complicated.